One Health as a Core Component of Veterinary Medicine: Defining Day-1 Public Health Competencies for the Veterinary...

Area of Science:

• Veterinary medicine
• Public health
• One Health

Background:

• Animal health and veterinary medicine are crucial components of the One Health approach, addressing challenges at the human-animal-environment interface.
• The existing Competency-Based Veterinary Education (CBVE) framework includes public health competencies but may require augmentation for comprehensive One Health integration.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify and incorporate essential veterinary public health (VPH)/One Health competencies into the established CBVE framework.
• To validate the hypothesis that early-career veterinarians possess VPH/One Health knowledge and skills that can be integrated into existing educational structures.

Main Methods:

• Conducted key informant and exploratory interviews with veterinarians across 12 diverse sectors.
• Utilized inductive coding to identify VPH/One Health-related codes from interview data.
• Cross-analyzed identified codes with the existing CBVE framework for validation and integration.

Main Results:

• Thirty VPH/One Health codes were identified.
• Five codes were adequately represented, six were not represented, and nineteen required creation or augmentation within the CBVE framework.
• The CBVE framework was updated to incorporate field-validated VPH/One Health competencies.

Conclusions:

• The revised CBVE framework now more accurately reflects the necessary breadth and depth of One Health engagement for competent veterinarians.
• This evidence-based revision process serves as a model for integrating One Health principles into veterinary and potentially other medical professional curricula.